STRENGTHENING SOCIAL DIALOGUE

Introduction

Nedlac, in addition to negotiation and consultation, is engaged in a range of activities which strengthen social dialogue.

CAPACITY BUILDING

Efforts to develop constituencies' capacity to engage in Nedlac and policy formulation more generally continue to be an important part of Nedlac's activities.

Nedlac funds the staffing and operations of the National Labour Secretariat and Community Constituency Offices. Capacity building funds have also been used by constituencies to hold workshops to prepare for Nedlac negotiations.

In addition to the constituency support which is funded off the Nedlac budget, both the Workplace Challenge and the Fridge subcommittees have made resources available to build constituencies' capacity.

As part of capacity building, Nedlac has an internal staff development programme, to ensure that the secretariat improves its capacity to service the needs of the Nedlac constituencies. During 1998/9, five secretariat members availed themselves of study loans to build skills in their areas of responsibility. Further, secretariat and some constituency office members attended an in-house facilitation course to enhance their ability to ensure ongoing dialogue between the Nedlac parties.

COMMUNICATIONS

Nedlac Publications

Nedlac produces two regular publications that inform the public about issues on the Nedlac work programme. In the year under review, there were five issues of Update, which is released after Management Committee meetings and updates readers on the work programme. Three issues of Dialogue were published after Executive Council meetings. The Dialogue reports in-depth on agreements by the Nedlac parties as well as providing information on the Executive Council focus sessions. These publications reach just over 6000 people. Three thousand five hundred are posted and a further 2600 are e-mailed.

Nedlac also runs a regular column in the bi-monthly South African Labour Bulletin, which analyses issues on the Nedlac agenda in more detail, as well providing an update on the work programme.

Nedlac has distributed a range of additional publications, which provide information in specialist areas. These publicationsare:

• A compilation of the codes of good practice agreed under the LRA.
• Guidelines for local government development.
• Memorandum of understanding on service tariffs.
• A compilation of inputs to a workshop on the Southern African Region.
• A booklet on "Tax for the Salaried Worker" that was produced in conjunction with the South African Revenue Service.

Website

Nedlac's website provides access to all Nedlac agreements. Further, the website includes:

• Links to constituency websites and to Parliament.
• A research database with JGF and Fridge information.
• A projects section with information on the Workplace Challenge, LRA project and infrastructure database project.

During 1998/9 there were on average 20 000 visits to the website per month.

Nedlac on Radio

In 1998, the Management Committee decided that an effort should be made to encourage the public broadcaster to give more airtime to issues of a socio-economic nature. Following discussions between Nedlac and the SABC, it was agreed that a weekly series called "Commerce and Finance" would be run on 10 radio stations during 1999. The aim of the programme is to heighten awareness and understanding of economic issues.

The series started with a two-part series on "What is Nedlac". The Nedlac secretariat, together with the Department of Labour, Department of Trade and Industry, the South African Revenue Service and the National Productivity Institute coordinate studio guests for each of the programmes.

Whilst listenership figures for the individual programmes are not available, the combined listenership of the stations is over 14 million people.

By coordinating this programme, Nedlac has made significant strides in ensuring that the country's population is empowered to understand and thereby contribute to economic policy debates.

Nedlac Archives

Over the past 4 years, Nedlac has negotiated many issues of historic significance to South Africa's development. To ensure that these historic processes are suitably stored and recorded, Nedlac has recently completed an extensive archiving exercise. These archives contain reports of all the agreements reached in Nedlac as well as the minutes of the negotiations leading to the agreements and background documents informing the negotiations.

PROMOTING SOCIAL DIALOGUE

Protest Action to Promote or Defend the Socio-Economic Rights of Workers

The Section 77 mechanism has enabled Nedlac to resolve many socio-economic disputes. The resolution of these disputes has avoided many costly protest actions.

Section 77 of the Labour Relations Act allows registered trade unions or federations of trade unions to undertake protest action to promote or defend the socio-economic interests of workers.

Before embarking on protest action, the Act requires the trade union concerned to serve notice on Nedlac stating the reasons for the protest action and the intended nature of the protest action. The Nedlac parties then meet with the trade union and other interested parties in an attempt to resolve the dispute. Should Nedlac be unable to resolve the dispute, workers are entitled to participate in protected protest action.

Since the promulgation of the Labour Relations Act, Nedlac has been served with 27 notices of protest action. Eleven of these notices were served in the period 1 April 1998 to 31 March 1999. In five of these cases the notices were incorrectly served on Nedlac and accordingly were referred back to the parties for resolution via alternative means.

Nedlac considered the following six notices during the past year:

• The Thabazimbi local branch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, in protest against the Thabazimbi Local Council's failure to address the socio-economic interests of local community (April 1998). The issue was successfully concluded after one meeting.

• The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) notice of possible protest action about the Eskom Amendment Bill (June 1998). No agreement was reached during the meeting that was held between the NUM and the Minister of Public Enterprises, Stella Sigcau.

• The Congress of South African Trade Unions, in protest against the Privatisation and Planned Privatisation of Municipal Services (August 1998). No agreement was reached after two meetings between Cosatu and the Departments of Constitutional Development and Water Affairs and Forestry. The matter was referred to bilaterals between Cosatu and government.

• The National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers, in protest against the closure of the Derdepoort Hospital in the NorthWest Province (January 1999). Agreement was reached after one meeting.

• The Federation of Unions of South Africa, in protest against the Department of Justice over the conditions of work and levels of pay for public prosecutors (January 1999). Agreement on a process to be followed within the Department of Justice bargaining council averted protest action on this issue.

• The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union against large-scale retrenchments and lack of transformation in the tertiary education sector (March 1999). Protest action was averted when parties agreed to hold a Higher Education Summit to engage on the issues raised by Nehawu.

Executive Council Focus Sessions

Since 1997, each Executive Council meeting has held a focus session on issues of central significance to the Nedlac constituencies. The focus sessions provide an opportunity for strategic discussion on these key issues amongst Nedlac's most senior reprentatives.

During 1998/9 the Executive Council held focus sessions on:

• The Presidential Jobs Summit, led by Alec Erwin.
• Poverty Alleviation led by the Department of Welfare, with an input by the South African NGO Coalition (Sangoco).
• Education, with specific reference to the redeployment of teachers, led by Professor Sibusiso Bengu.
• Global Financial Crisis with inputs by Dennis Dykes and Asghar Adelzadeh.

Chamber Policy Sessions

Chambers are required to hold regular policy sessions with the minister or ministers whose portfolios coincide with the work programme of the chamber. The policy sessions help to give a greater strategic direction to the work undertaken by the chamber.

The Trade and Industry Chamber held a policy session with Minister Erwin in April. The policy session focussed on the policy parameters for the Industrial Development Zones as well as the strategic principles underpinning the SADC trade negotiations.

Commissions at the annual Nedlac Summit

The Nedlac Annual Summit includes a number of breakaway commissions that allow senior Nedlac delegates the opportunity to reflect upon issues of significance to socio-economic development and social dialogue. At the 1998 Summit, there were commissions on:

• The impact of public sector restructuring on economic development
• The impact of integration of the Southern African region
• Developing an institutional framework for social dialogue
• The challenges of infrastructure delivery
• The impact of globalisation
• The role of collective bargaining in equity and efficiency
• Addressing social security and poverty alleviation
• Technology and what it means for the economy

Commissions at the Presidential Jobs Summit

Following the success of the commissions at the Annual Summit, the constituencies decided that a similar form of strategic dialogue would contribute to strengthening the outcomes of the Jobs Summit. Accordingly, commissions discussed the substance and implementation of the Jobs Summit agreements. The commissions focussed on:

• Realising human potential
• Special employment programmes
• Infrastructure development
• Integrated provincial lead projects
• Trade and industry
• Tourism

Statistics

Nedlac parties have recognised the importance of accurate statistics to the formulation of economic and social policy. Following the release of the preliminary census results, Nedlac parties expressed concern about the accuracy of the census results. A committee was established to work together with Statistics South Africa (SSA) in establishing the validity of the census data. Independent experts, appointed by Nedlac, agreed with the final results of the census which were released in October 1998.

As part of a continuing dialogue with Statistics South Africa, the Nedlac constituencies have received briefings on labour market statistics and SSA's pricing policy for the census data.

Links with Other Participative Institutions

During 1998 Nedlac continued to strengthen its links with other tripartite structures. In addition to the customary tripartite delegation that attends the ILO Governing Body, Nedlac constituencies participated in a Social dialogue conference in Mozambique. Further, the General Co-ordinator undertook a study visit to the Flanders Socio-Economic Council during November 1998.

During 1999, the Nedlac parties will attend the Sixth International Meeting of Social and Economic Councils in Mauritius.

Visitors to Nedlac

Nedlac's contribution to economic and social policy formulation has gained international prominence in the four years since its launch. Indicative of this prominence is the number of visitors that Nedlac receives. During 1998/9, Nedlac received 23 delegations from domestic and international institutions. These delegations included members of parliament from foreign countries, tripartite delegations from other African countries, representatives of multilateral institutions and other socio-economic councils.

Prominent amongst these were:

• The President of Chile
• The Italian Minister of Trade and Industry
• Executive Director of the Mauritius National Economic Development Council
• Flanders Minister of Employment
• Chief Conciliator from Denmark
• President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission

Figure 20: Composition of visits to Nedlac 1998/9

Over and above visits from delegations, Nedlac receives numerous researchers who are undertaking work on issues relating to governance and social dialogue and on issues that are negotiated through Nedlac's chambers.

Briefings, Presentations and Workshops

In addition to receiving visitors at Nedlac, Nedlac receives numerous requests to provide briefings on Nedlac's operations and issues on the work programme. During 1998/9, Nedlac representatives provided briefings to many different forums including business chambers, trade union colleges and parliamentary portfolio committees. These have included, amongst others,:

• The South African Defence College
• The National Union of Metalworkers Industrial Strategy School
• The Labour Law Conference
• The RDP Portfolio Committee
• The University of Port Elizabeth
• Coca-Cola, SA
• University of South Africa Business School